Educational Design to Meet Learner‘s Need

Sixth Reflective Journal for PETA Course

23th November 2011 was another first meeting with PETA course after two weeks of midterm. That day our schedule was covering all the materials which hadn’t studied before. That why Ms Ine divided the class into five groups because there were five topics to be covered. There were differentiate model, cooperative learning, effective teacher and effective teaching, developing lesson plan and last is learning style and multiple intelligences. I was in the fifth group and got learning style and multiple intelligences topic. So in this reflection I will talk about learning style and multiple intelligences.

            According to discussion result in my group, we assume that learning style and multiple intelligences are theories which learned about human differences in educational context. Though these two theories teachers are expected to design an appropriate educational model/ instruction which meet learner needs.  To highlight learning style and multiple intelligences have different point of view to classified learners. I will talk about both of its one by one.

            First is learning style theories. Just like the name learning style theories classify learners into four groups based on learner’s learning styles. They are:

1.      The mastery style learner

This type of learner has tendency to absorb information concretely. So this learner like to process information sequentially step by step and put more focus on clarity.

2.      The understanding style learner

This type of learner is stress on how to understand an idea and an abstraction. They like questioning, reasoning, testing and evaluating an idea based on their logic and the contextual event.

3.      The self-expressive style learner

This type of learner are using more emotion and feeling in learning process. This learner is really good in expressing new idea and modifying/developing the existing idea. This learner also value and judge learning process with parameter originality, aesthetics and delight.

4.      The interpersonal style learner

This type of learner is similar with the mastery style learner but the difference is this type of learner prefers to learn in group rather that individually.

            Another thing to be noticed from this model is the statement that learning styles are not fixed throughout life. It could be shift from one type into another type. My concern is I still confuse whether someone’s learning style actually related or depend on the subject of the lesson. Does it possible if one person is a mastery style learner when she/he learns science then he/she becomes the self expressive style learner when he/she learns art?

            The second theory is multiple intelligences theory which is purposed by Howard Gardner. He classified learners into seven group based on their intelligences. They are linguistics intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily- kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence.

            Until now Gardner theory is popular. However there are two weakness of multiple intelligence theory. First this theory based on cognitive science. Second this theory focus on content of learning and does not consider individual process of learning. It cause some question like: Are the bodily kinesthetic intelligence between a football player and dancer different or the same? Are the musical intelligence between a singer and a composer different or the same?

            Actually those questions could be answered by integrating learning style and multiple intelligences theories. Because with the integration we will know that singer and composer have the same musical intelligence with different learning style.

            However to me it is still vague about the exact number of multiple intelligences. It is because some books say there are eight types of multiple intelligence, in other hand other books say there are nine types of multiple intelligence and my article (for group discussion) say it only seven types of multiple intelligence. Another thing which makes me confused is about the cognitive science. I am wondering about why one of the weaknesses of multiple intelligences is because it based on cognitive science. Is cognitive science hasn’t recognized yet in scientific world? That my entire reflective journal for now.

           

The Meeting after School Experience Program

Fifth Reflective Journal for PETA Course

After two weeks did school experience finally I went back to my regular activity which include go back to my academic activity, doing assignments and attending all the courses. Tuesday 1 November 2011 was first meeting with PETA course again. That day we did three kinds of activity.

 The first activity was experience sharing, in that session Miss Ine divided the class into four groups. I was in the first group which consists of seven members. We shared our experience to each other. That was so much fun and meaningful activity because beside I heard funny and interesting stories I also could learn many things from my friend’s experience. For example I learned about behavioral issues like student who are hard to handle and mentor teacher who is not quite friendly. Not only listen to the stories and laughed whenever funny events occur from the stories there were also lesson learn like how to overcome the obstacles in learning and teaching process.

Actually all of my friend’s stories lead me to reflect on my own experience because in the school experiences, I met a student who was hard to handle and I think he was quite childish for a senior high school student.  He keep do some activity to draw teacher’s attention and he just wouldn’t do the given assignment if the teacher didn’t accompany him. Until now I still couldn’t figure out how to deal with those types of student. I am wonder whether we as teacher should give those types of student special attention or not. I am afraid if give them special attention will elicit negative reaction from other students like envious.

After sharing experience the second activity was did group discussion on four types of model instruction and did gallery walk. Because my group was the first group we discuss about direct instruction model. When working in group our lecturer gave each member of the group different position like facilitator, recorder, illustrator, material manager and encourager. Each position had different job and responsibility. I think everyone was did the job really well. However actually I quite confuse with the encourager’s job description because in my opinion the encourager’s work is only as a ‘cheerleader’. I wonder if an encourager is really needed or not for a small group work.

 The third or the last activity was did reflective journal in the end of the class. Miss Ine gave us a paper and we were expected to write down our understanding about all models of instruction on it. Personally I think our last activity was good because through the journal I as a student could check my understanding on the lesson and the lecturer also could know about student’s level of understanding. In the future I think I will ask my students to write reflective journal too because it effective to check student’s level of understanding and could stimulate student’s high order thinking skill.

New Exciting Experience

Reflective Paper for School Experience 

After did school experience for four days I learned so much things in each day. In the first day I observed the class I found that my mentor teacher didn’t do the all the things which written in lesson plan. I think that because the students were really active they keep commenting on anything and make fun of each other. Based on my observation the teacher just ignored the “chaos sources”. If only I were him I would acknowledge them and give them more responsibility like appoint them to become the class assistants.

            In the second day observing, I noticed that the teacher using a power point to support his class but the content in his power point presentation was really similar with the one in the student handbook.

In the third day I observed my mentor teacher’s listening class. The thing I noted was he used a popular song for listening practice. I concerned if there were students who already memorized the lyric.

            Meanwhile in the fourth day I and my partner, Martan were given chance to teach. We have prepared the lesson plan, the teaching aids and practiced the day before. But too bad, because of the limited of time we couldn’t lead all the activity completely.

Last from this new experience I noted two things. First I should learn more about classroom management and second I shouldn’t use an up to date and popular song for listening session.

To See What is Real through Multiple View on Human

Human is the most complicated creature I ever know. That explain why sometimes people cannot understand someone else.  It is because there are varied identities in one person so it hard for other to know about someone else accurately. Because mostly we never seen someone as a whole person. We just know someone through one view based on one of his/her identity.

            Actually that is really normal because to know someone’s identities accurately we need to spend so much time with him/her. That why we only know a few of people very well. This nature sometimes could make problem like mistreat, misunderstanding even fight or war. Personally I think every hostility in this world occur because people cannot view others’ whole identities

            To be honest I have experienced mistreat because of this nature when someone said harsh thing to me because of my opinion. We were in the middle of debating on marriage’s problem.  Actually everything was fine until we end up debating about which is better between house’s wife and career woman. To response I said that even one day I become a married woman I will still work.  It turned out that he was against my opinion with saying that a woman should stay in house to take care of children. I keep rebating him until he said to me that I should never dream to lead my future children into successfulness because my life’s way is a career woman.

            I was so angry at him. He doesn’t know anything about me but he dared to say such things. He never knows that aside from a student and a woman who someday should take care of her family. I am the eldest in my family so I have moral responsibilities to fulfill even no one ever told me so. He also never knows that become a teacher is my idea since I was in my childhood so I will pursue it. It is not like I am trying to deny my nature as a woman. What happen is my multiple identities  create an invisible boundaries in area do’s and don’ts in my life so I have my own perspective on career woman Vs. house wife’s case.

            I have to admit that I never forget about what he had said to me. At that time I even felt a need to rebate him over and over again. But then I realize if I have my own reason based on my multiple identities behind every action and thought I have, then so does him. I am sure he dared to say such thing because of his own multiple identities.

            So to solve my problem I think all I need to do is to respect him. But still in the very first chance I get to meet him again I will talk to him about this matter.  But I will try my best not to judge him because I do not want to become a narrow minded person. I want to become a person who able to see others through multiple views based on their multiples identities.

Technology: New Medium in Learning Language Process

5^th Reflective Journal for Technology and Language Learning

            After last week I learned about principles in designing CALL, in these 8^th and 9^th sessions I learned about the ‘real’ example of CALL’s which has functions to teach listening and speaking skill.

 As for technology to teach listening skill I explored some websites which provide listening skill practice program like Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab and British Council-Learn English: Song and Lyric. These two websites I mentioned is the implementation of natural approach which proposed by Krashen and Terrel in 1983. This approach believes at two main things, comprehensible input and optimum affective state. It believes that to produce a good output in language learning process, learner should get an understandable input and free from anxiety, has good self confident and has good intrinsic motivation.  

            Both of the websites I mentioned before designing their website along with the natural approach view. With give a comprehensible input like in British Council-Learn English which gives input for young learner through song and animation and Randall’s website which provide listening skill practice program with contextual topic like conversation in telephone for adult learner. Both of the websites also elicit an optimal stage learning with provide a game and immediate test to examine learner understanding. The best thing is the correction of error is really instant but it won’t make learner feel ashamed if they did wrong.

            Other technology to teach listening skill is based on TPR (Total Physical Response) which proposed by Asher. This technique has strong believes that learner shouldn’t be force to produce output if they are not ready yet. This faith seems obviously in the websites which use this technique like Live Action English Interactive and TPR games. For example in Live Action English Interactive website, it provides a lot of video which tell about a certain activity complete with the illustration.  All teacher need to do are download the video, show the video in front of class and ask student to do pantomiming based on the video. Learner shouldn’t  have to produce any outcome like utterances or writing.

            Meanwhile in the 9^th session I learned about technology to teach speaking, honestly I had high expectation to explore all the CALL’s to teach speaking skill. I was thinking I would find a high tech CALL which could recognize and assess people’s speaking skill in English accurately, fairly and immediately.

            But then my high expectations kind of broken when I figure out that most of websites only provide programs to teach learners about the right pronunciation and repeat it by themselves alone.  Some of websites provide facilitate to record someone’s voice but the there is no assessment or correction from the website. The only human and machine interaction exist is when the website record someone’s voice.  Another bad point is some websites are ‘so heavy’ so it is not easy to open the website completely especially in my place which doesn’t have good internet connection.

            Last I will end my reflection with say that actually I hope soon there is a CALL who can assess someone’s speaking skill accurately  and I also hope internet connection in my place will get better and better.

New Finding, New Understanding

Forth Reflective Journal for PETA Course

            11^th October 2011 was the forth times I attended PETA course. Today learning schedule was not really tight because all I had to do is observing all micro teaching performance my classmate did. Today there were seven groups doing micro teaching excluding my own group because my group already did it in PETA previous meeting.

            At first I thought I will get bored and would instantly fell sleepy because practically I had nothing to do. But then my assumption was wrong, I could pay my full attention at each group which did micro teaching. One of reason was because their micro teaching is really interesting and it seemed like they have prepared all the teaching aids well (It made me feel a bit jealous because my group performance was not so good). The other reason was because the rest of class was assigned to guess about which model of instruction was used by the group that did micro teaching and also assessed their performance.

            Through observing at all the micro teaching performances I could get clear picture about how to teach in front of class with use creative ways. I also learned about how to choose a model of instruction wisely so it will be appropriate with the leaning objective. More than that, I also could get a picture about real classroom climate.

            In the end of today session Ms Ine summed up everything and gave further explanation about four models of instruction we have learned before. Form this session I discovered answers  for some problems and I also met new understanding about four models of instruction. I’d like to list my new finding in learning four models of instruction:

1.      I got basic understanding on models of instruction’s nature that models of instruction is the same with learning methodologies, what makes it different is only the matter of term.

2.      I finally discovered that the main difference of Guide Discovery model and Group Interaction model is the purpose of each model. If Guide Discovery model’s purpose stress on how to make student become an individual learner, Group Interaction model stress on student ability in solving problem in group

3.      I got to know about type on question in Lecture Discussion model.  Because to be honest it was rather unclear for me whether the type of question used in Lecture Discussion model is remain on LOTS (Lower Order Thinking Skills) or it could be HOTS (High Oder Thinking Skills). Today I finally knew that the types of question are depended on the need and learning objective itself. Highlight in Lecture Discussion Model is how teacher link the recent lesson with the older one.

That is all of my reflection on PETA material so far. I will end it with a unique fact I found out today after I observing all micro teaching performance my classmate did. They had tendency to use lecture discussion model or combining between lecture discussion with group interaction model (So did my group).

I am wondering about was this happened coincidentally or maybe it was happened  because there is tendency for new faculty member or new teacher to use lecture discussion model because it easier to maintain the student. For me, personally I prefer to use lecture discussion model combining with group interaction in teaching. So I can let my students interact with each other but still I have control on them, because the idea  that my class gone ‘wild’ doesn’t sound good to me.

Technology: Let’s Refine the Word ‘Learning’

4^th Reflection Journal for Technology and Language Learning

With today technology’s development I think we should refine definition of word ‘learning’. If in past many people (including me) assumed that learning is a process to gain knowledge in the classroom and students need to enroll in a legal institute. In my opinion that definition should be refined because it is not contextual anymore. In fact learning today is more likely a process to get information, cultivate it and applies it in real world without time or place restrains.  It could happen because technology help and it kind of amazed me.

            With technology help, face to face interaction in learning process shouldn’t be intense anymore. You even can learn overseas without literally go to overseas, even through that sound impossible with technology it possible. Because we can use internet to access lecture materials form some big university all over the world which provide Open University program and learn that materials independently. It will cost less and it really suitable for busy student because they can manage themselves better. 

            In special case like in language learning there is CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) to help language learner and like it doesn’t sophisticated enough after I attend 4^th course of TLL, I get to know about MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) which utilize the usage of mobile phone, PDA and Ipods for language learning. That is really cool because with MALL, language learner could learn language anytime and anywhere because the needed device is portable.

Photo taken from

http://blog.lyle.web.id/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mixstyle-2.jpg

            I heard that in South Korea the usage of mobile for learning is really popular. It is because with MALL students can access their class in anywhere even in the middle of traffic! In South Korean, MALL is connected with internet, is not a big surprise considering South Korean is country with the fastest internet connection in the world. So lecturers record their lecture and upload it in internet then students can download it and learn from it.

            But of course aside from it strength, MALL also has weakness. Because slightly different with CALL which can access high quality of video or audio-video, with MALL it is quite hard to access ‘heavy’ page or content because it is not suitable with the devices. Other than that device for MALL is limited, it is not provided in all regions. So for today CALL is better than MALL due to MALL’s weakness.

Not only get to know about CALL and MALL from TLL’S course I also learn about how to design CALL program.  There are some things we should consider in designing CALL program. The most important thing are understanding that pedagogy should comes first rather than technology and awareness that pedagogical interactivity is a priority and it is followed by computer interactivity.  More than that I also learn about do’s and dont’s in content, visual, navigation and multimedia design for designing a good CALL program.

Personally I cannot wait for MALL and CALL to be popular in language learning process in Indonesia.